FPC Gets Manufacturer Approval for In-Display Fingerprint Sensor

Fingerprint Cards (FPC) is preparing to move forward with the commercial launch of an in-display fingerprint sensor. The company is best known as a provider of capacitive sensors, but its new in-display offering has now passed all of the necessary quality control tests for a major smartphone manufacturer in the Asian market.

The development clears FPC’s in-display fingerprint sensor for use in new smartphones from the manufacturer. FPC believes that the first handsets with its sensor will roll off the line sometime later in the year.

However, that does not mean that FPC is planning to abandon its capacitive sensor line. The company has previously predicted that the capacitive sensor market would remain strong despite the growing popularity of in-display designs, and it is now suggesting that the two markets will grow alongside one another as the overall smartphone market expands. In that regard, FPC expects that manufacturers will ship 600 million Android handsets with in-display fingerprint sensors in 2026.

“I’m very pleased that our under-display solution has now successfully cleared this key hurdle, which I believe demonstrates the quality of our solution,” said FPC Mobile, PC, and Access China President Ted Hansson. “We expect the first commercial projects this year, which would open up attractive new growth opportunities for us going forward.”

The debut of the in-display sensor marks FPC’s first foray into that particular market segment. The company’s technology has been featured in more than 600 different smartphone models as of March, with Xiaomi’s Redmi K50 standing as one of the more recent deployments. That one features Fingerprints’ FPC1542, a curved capacitive sensor that can be installed in the power or volume button of a modern smartphone. FPC has credited that sensor for allowing the company to remain competitive with in-display sensor manufacturers, since the side-mounted sensor enables capacitive fingerprint authentication without taking over any space on the screen itself.

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April 25, 2022 – by Eric Weiss